


What Do You Have?

by nowherenew



Series: Rarepair Hell: Arthur Morgan/Paladin Danse Edition [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Dirty Talk, M/M, Paladin Danse is Victor Danse who used to be an O'Driscoll, comeuppance, king simp and his not-boyfriend manpain mcgee, the boys are fIGHTINGGGG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 11:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30038166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowherenew/pseuds/nowherenew
Summary: When he desires, Arthur can sound like thunder. Becomes it, with the heavy steps and the low grunts on each footfall. If he is angry, it is felt. He sounds like a lumbering fool. A threat, but a damn fool.Appropriately.“What have you been doing to Beau Gray, Victor?”What indeed.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Beau Gray (mentioned), Paladin Danse/Arthur Morgan, Paladin Danse/Beau Gray (mentioned)
Series: Rarepair Hell: Arthur Morgan/Paladin Danse Edition [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140461
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	What Do You Have?

When he desires, Arthur can sound like thunder. Becomes it, with the heavy steps and the low grunts on each footfall. If he is angry, it is felt. He sounds like a lumbering fool. A threat, but a damn fool. 

Appropriately.

“What have you been doing to Beau Gray, Victor?”

What indeed.

_ (Victor tells Beau that he has just the right amount of hair, perfect length for big hands. “I’ll grab it, if’n you want me to. Use it to fuck that mouth, I’ll teach you how to take a cock properly.” The eyes that meet his are big and wet, all desire, and the highborn young man trips twice on “yes.” First, he seizes Victor’s mouth with his, though.) _

_ (Beau has learned to be greedy.) _

Instead of acknowledging Arthur with the bare minimum of looking at him, Victor shrugs and flicks his fishing rod. 

“Can’t say I know what you mean, Arthur.”

_ (Pretty, well-washed hair feels soft and thick in Victor’s hand. He tugs it back, and Beau’s head follows. Into the skin on the heir’s neck, Victor breathes, “Feels good.”) _

_ (“Yes,” agrees Beau, who has turned his head to press his nose to Victor’s forearm. “You smell like—”) _

_ (“Like sweat? Like filth? Like  **work** , Beau? That’s what you like, ain’t it? Stooping for outlaws and rough-living folk?” Curling his knuckles tighter to his palm, Victor jerks his wrist back a bit. Just enough to jostle. Just enough to shake some noise from the pretty rich boy.) _

Arthur does not appreciate being trifled with. Never has, for any reason. He steps from behind Victor to beside him. 

Eye contact is still past the boundary of what Victor is willing to give the lumbering fool. It’s hot on the ridge of his cheekbone, the glare of blue eyes on top of the bare sunshine. 

For so long, Arthur’s gaze was all Victor wanted. It feels satisfying to have it and decline it. Even more satisfying to be prompted to engage with Arthur and be able to proudly refuse. 

Satisfying.

That’s a word for it.

The right one, Victor reminds himself. The right word. He wanted to interfere with Arthur’s gratification. He wanted to take something from him by fucking his pretty boy better. He wanted Arthur angry. 

Not for the attention. Of course not. No, Victor wanted Arthur angry for the satisfaction.

_ (When Beau rasps and nods as best he can with his hair tight to the root, Victor sneers. “Perfectly happy with your poetry and your mansion until you go and start wantin’ something more. Ain’t that right? And then you get on your knees like a common harlot.”) _

_ (Victor has never spoken to anyone the way he speaks to Beau. The words sometimes feel not quite his own. That can make them exciting, rustle along his skin like new heat.) _

_ (It can also make them feel farcical. Borrowed, even.) _

_ (Victor would be a dishonest man if he attempted to convince himself that he has no desire to hear those words said to him. To find them, he searches within his own dreams. He listens to the low rumbles in his head when he is alone, scoops words that make him shake, and he takes them to Beau Gray because if he cannot hear them, he may as well use them.) _

As the water murmurs, Arthur growls, and he wedges his heels into the sand, closer to Victor now. Another step, abrupt and lurching, as though to make the gang’s former captive flinch. 

He does not react. The fishing line still has his full attention. 

The rod dips on a bite, but Victor does not hook and reel. He is too late. Or, perhaps, fishing is no longer quite the point. 

“The Gray boy. I know you been with him. Said so himself, he did. What have you been doin’, O’Driscoll?”

_ (“You don't want to be important, do you?” There is rage in Victor’s every consonant, and the spit hits Beau’s ear every time. The words are wielded, not just said. “You just want to be the willing hole for your lessers.”) _

_ (Snapping for air, Beau twists his fist in Victor’s undershirt until it rides up past his jeans. The metal clasp of his suspenders is ice on his hip. At first dry, it runs soon to wet, from rubbing against the sweat.) _

_ (Quickly, the cold simmers to nothing as Victor’s skin shares its heat with the clasp.) _

The fish are bustling, jumping, active as can be, and yet only that one had taken interest in Victor's bait.

Gone now, and none swim to take its place.

Kieran was always a luckier fisherman than Victor. He’d much rather have his old friend's company right about now, not just to have company other than a self-righteous, seething Arthur, but to at least see some action on the line. Even if they all huddled around Kieran's hook, vicarious gratification is gratification nonetheless.

Usually, Danse has a bit more luck. Maybe the storm beside him, tall and blue-eyed and laden with opaque cloud cover, is frightening them off. Maybe they know better than to stray into its path.

The fish, then, would be wiser than Victor.

_ (Beau means no harm. It is clear that his intentions are as good as a rich man’s could be. Still, he is the target of Victor’s resentment. More fortunate than not, considering the “punishment” the Gray gets. Victor would not mind being resented, either, if their positions were reversed.)  _

_ (Still, intentions fail to overwrite the injustice of it all. Beau is perfectly happy growing up with money, perfectly happy with a wife and a future, the poetry and books and whatever other gentlemanly pursuits folks like Beau get to waste their time on when they need not worry about survival. It must feel good to get his hole held open on someone who’s been treated too rough to treat others nicely anymore, and then go back to a clean bed at the end of the day, thinking about a future about which he has the luxury of certainty.) _

_ (“You want people like me to use you, but you ever come to think that you're not the one being used? S’pose not. Not the way you look at me. Like you don't even know who you are, what you are. What you’ve  got.” Power. That’s what Beau has. The only kind that lasts. The gang, they’ve got soul and strength and smarts. Power in all the realest senses. But they don’t have a name, and they don’t have money that’s theirs.) _

_ (Beau doesn’t understand what he has.) _

_ (For the love of Christ, he had Arthur Morgan.) _

_ (And this well-fed, well-mannered waif does not understand how fucking important Arthur Morgan is. Doesn’t get it. Doesn’t see that whole, incredible man for what he is; complex and beautiful and more intelligent than Beau, just less fancy. And yet, the pretty thing with a head empty the way only wealth can make it just looks at Arthur and sees a prop in his fantasy of being used by an outlaw. It is a shameful, awful thing.) _

_ (Beau doesn’t deserve Arthur Morgan.) _

_ (But oh, that is a thought most unwelcome, and it tacks a whole hell of complicated mess onto the one thing Victor convinced himself he could keep simple.) _

“Victor. Look at me, boy.” Arthur’s voice is far away. As it should be. 

_ (“I should just fuck you and fuck you until your life is a little less whole, until you feel like you're missin' somethin' when we're gone. Because we'll go, Beau. We have better things out there. And what do you have?”) _

_ (And what do you have?) _

_ (What do  **you** have, Victor?) _

_ (The rest of their time together goes thoughtless and timeless as though unreal; just skin and breath and rage barely contained, and then wet noise, and then wet mess. And then he is home, washed though he recalls not where he stopped to bathe, dressed though he does not recall when he changed.) _

_ (Victor does not like losing time.) _

_ (He does not much like Lemoyne and all it has wrought.) _

“Victor, you damn well better look at me and—”

The fishing rod clatters against the log, right where Victor had been sitting. Now, he stands to face Arthur, eyes level with the older man’s. They are just as blue as always, doing just as much violence to Victor’s soul as they did the first time he saw them. They shout, indignance roiling hot atop anger. 

“I have been givin’ Beau Gray exactly what he needs, is what I’ve been doin’ to him. And for your further information, Arthur, you and I are no longer on speaking terms.”

Saying it feels good for all of two seconds, but it hollows out as soon as it leaves his mouth. The words are there, but the commitment to cutting Arthur out is still missing. It was supposed to feel more powerful than this. More fulfilling, at the very least. 

It does not seem to affect Arthur with the devastation Victor hoped, but it does cause his anger to sputter, and his frown deepens. “Now, what the hell are you on about with that, then? Got some explainin’ to do now, with talk like that.”

Entitlement. Sheer entitlement. Perhaps Victor judged too soon, and too colored by his own feelings; maybe Arthur and Beau share more than he cared to acknowledge. Drawing half-breaths to his lungs and half-thoughts to his tongue, Victor grimaces and lunges a hand towards Arthur, palm up, as though gesturing at him will explain everything. 

It doesn’t, so those half-thoughts come tumbling through to noise. 

“You go off and fuck some poet, some waif of a thing, give him—give him things you ain’t given—and he’s never stood at your back, now, has he? Never spilled blood for you, never done anything but give you his daddy’s cotton cash for favors, treat you like a  _ mailman _ . I saved your life, Arthur Morgan, doomed myself to do it, at that, and you treat me like there ain’t nothing more disgusting to you than letting me touch you.”

The volume is appropriate to their distance from camp. Victor wanted to be alone, after all, but Arthur came clambering through the brush looking for trouble. Arthur opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again. Fish-like. Too bad there is no hook or bait Victor wants to waste on him any longer. Arthur is not his problem anymore. 

Whether or not he’s ready for Arthur to not be his problem, it’s out in the open now. 

And his heart informs his mind that no, they’re not done with his tongue yet. 

“Do you know what I see when I look at that? When I look at you whoring with folk like Beau Gray? Seems you can only give yourself to someone who will never, ever want to keep you. And you scribble in your journal about how sad and damned lonely you are, but you know what you really are? A real piece of work. You are a real piece of work, Arthur.”

There is liberation in honesty. Victor is not the chatty type, but he is also not the type to avoid saying what he means. The truth has battered at the wall of his teeth for too long, and now there are too many honesties to portion them out. They can only all come at once, and Arthur is simultaneously nothing before him and everything he sees and will ever see.

“I have had about enough of you, Arthur fuckin’ Morgan, since the way I see it, you’ve had about enough of me since we first met. And I’m done bein’ all right with that. So you and I? We are no longer on speaking terms. You live your life, and I’ll live mine, and I ain’t hearing your voice anymore, or so help me, I will do something I regret.”

Silence from the man who moonlights as everything, who resides in every shadow and dream. 

Having expressed himself, Victor feels lighter, but he does not feel better. In fact, he feels worse. Though he wants to look away, because that is what an independent, unbothered man would do, he holds that fire-hot gaze in his own, and they are entirely two pairs of eyes. It goes on for an age. 

There is a world of activity behind Arthur’s eyes, but Victor is clueless to any of it. How could he begin to know what goes on inside that head? The man has labored to make himself a mystery, taken pains to keep the doors to himself shut. He takes a step forward and says low and slow, “You’re making a mistake here, Victor.”

“Afraid I can’t agree with you, Arthur. But even if it’s a mistake, that don’t change that it’s mine to make.” After all this time yearning for Arthur to fuck him, to at the very least have permission to touch him back, the disappointment has soured to distaste. He won’t wait around for a man who has given exactly no indication that he wants Danse as anything more than an easily-accessible, convenient thing to touch. 

He’s been a simpleton for wanting Arthur at all, let alone thinking waiting would make any difference.

All the fear of this conversation has fluttered free, now that it is done. But none of the rotten pain has left Victor. The yearning is not yet gone. It thrums just as it has for months. Loneliness burrows deeper within him now, and he is still enough of a fool to think he has closed a door. It was never open.

Open, though, is Arthur’s face, and while the anger has not softened, his frown has taken on a tone of distress. Danse still does not possess the nonchalance to look away and pointedly ignore a man who takes residence in his every thought, and Arthur narrows his eyes and shifts on his feet, restless.

Then, when Victor has stared long enough at the man who refuses to be seen when he is watched, Arthur Morgan exhales, turns, and leaves. This time, the path is not victim to heavy, furious steps. It is just the unremarkable retreat of the world’s most remarkable man, and they are both left to their own selves.

There is relief in being left alone. Soon, though, Victor finds he cannot quite breathe relief. No, a cold and abrupt thing has slithered between his ribs and gripped them tight to breaking open, because he realizes that Arthur’s physical departure doesn’t change anything. The truth of the matter is that together, they were always alone. The distance between the two of them never truly changed, no matter how much space they shared, no matter how much breath they borrowed from one another, no matter how much sweat they spent together.

Better to be lonely than a simple, wishful fool, Victor tells himself. Over and over, again and again, he tells himself. Better to be lonely than a simple, wishful fool.


End file.
